


The Pit

by unknowableroom_archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-11-19
Updated: 2006-11-20
Packaged: 2019-01-19 23:21:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,599
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12420348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unknowableroom_archivist/pseuds/unknowableroom_archivist
Summary: "But when I looked at Baby, her green eyes pink and wet, I couldn’t stop her or save her; I could only be there and snuffle with her, too young to be a man yet, too young to be a savior."





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Note from ChristyCorr, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Unknowable Room](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Unknowable_Room), a Harry Potter archive active from 2005-2016. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project after May 2017. I e-mailed all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Unknowable Room collection profile](http://www.archiveofourown.org/collections/unknowableroom).

  
Author's notes: 1  


* * *

 

**The Pit**

  
_By Solarism_

  
PROLOGUE 

  
Posted November 19th, 2006 

 

 

* * *

 

Baby fell into a hole that made her weak, a big pit of blackness that roughed her up and made her forget the way life was before. When we found her it was like finding a dying animal—she was wounded and fierce, but so, so weak and piteous that we were almost afraid to touch her for her fragility. Before then she had always been gratuitous, the sort of backlit presence associated with Quidditch stands and common room roaring fires, but suddenly she had become someone we were directly responsible for. She was weaker than she used to be, a little bit more pernicious, a little bit more complicated than the four of us were willing to admit. Sirius believed in tough love, Remus in mothering, Peter in nursing, and I didn’t know what to think, so I avoided her eyes. We did that. We took Baby in after her fall, after the pit, and we let her know all of her cracks and discrepancies were ours, too. We nurtured her, her little face crestfallen and disappointed with us always, and we just hoped, prayed, God we prayed, that she wouldn’t forget it when she healed.

As we lay together, hairs twisted and limbs insecure, I whispered to her about the future and about a defeatless summer. I told her that I was an orphan, too, and that I would take care of her, let her hide beside me—that we didn’t have to face anything if we didn’t want to, that I would hold her hand. I told her I would die for her. Baby turned her face away toward the light and crumpled, ruffled, in my arms, a little heaving mass of sadness. I tried to stroke her that night, quiet her sobs with my fingertips and my chin and the caresses of my eyelashes. But Baby kept sobbing, heaving her dry heaves toward the fire, inconsolable. I let her, I let her lay and heave, conscious of her pit and of mine, too, and what Sirius would say—he would say I shouldn’t let her do that, shouldn’t let her feel self-pity, shouldn’t let her be broken like that. But when I looked at Baby, her green eyes pink and wet, I couldn’t stop her or save her; I could only be there and snuffle with her, too young to be a man yet, too young to be a savior.

I wanted her to run away with me, far away from plight and dark and pits—I wanted no forests, no stars, no defiance of God and good and hope. I asked her if she would go away into my head with me so we could live together, two little orphans, short-haired and pink and snuffling, too young, too innocent for this mess. She cried, the saliva on her lips rubbing against my school tie, and collapsed into me, little fingers twisting, wrinkling my shirt, wrinkling and rubbing time itself, wishing for the parents that left, for the missing opportunities and absence of prayer. Where in her orisons were the realities, the murmurs, the insulated against evil truths? She could find no hope and neither could I with her itty bitty fingernails and the sounds she made in her throat when she coughed up her heart. It was unfair and I hated God for doing this to me to her to us to the world why was there sin and hate and why did people have to die and go away and leave forever and betray?

Her knuckles brushed her nostrils, flared, while her eyes looked elsewhere, anywhere else, the tears seeping out, a whole river of loss and opportunity cost. I hadn’t cried since the news had broken over me and I couldn’t, I couldn’t seep out a molecule of dampness for her loss or for mine or for the world’s. I told her my parents had been good people and that they had died natural deaths and that it made me proud to be their son that they had done so much good while they lived and maybe I could do good too if I could only figure out how. And Baby clutched on and thought of her pit so I told her she could do good too or we could do nothing, whatever she wanted, I would do it, I would die. And she asked me not to die, not to leave her, with choked breath and a redness in her cheeks, because I would be a good man and she needed me to please not leave, please not even breathe for fear of moving.

So I didn’t breathe and she cried and splayed across me her red hair and skin and soap smell and she cried and cried and cried for what she’d lost and what she had to gain. I held her hand in the dark even when the embers and stars deserted, fickle, insubstantial, fighting friends, and my own throat strained to give hers relief. If I could only press upon her, take her up, choke the fear and bad out of her and take it on me, I would. I would die for her, I would die for her, _I would die for her_.

And, much, much later, I did.


	2. Papaya, Oak & Doorways

**The Pit**

_By Solarism_

CHAPTER ONE: PAPAYA, OAK  & DOORWAYS  


Posted November 20th, 2006

 

* * *

 

"I brought you this," I tell her, offering up a slim slice of papaya from my cloak pocket, tensely aware that all she'll eat these days are things with seeds. She lifts her heavy lids to me, betraying the dark gray circles beneath her eyes, and shakes her head in silent refusal. "No?" I query, my teeth gritted in anticipation, afraid. She shakes her head despondently, no, and my heart rushes out of my ribcage to the ground at high velocity, leaving me and her and the people around us in awe of my inner capacity to fall apart. I take a step back, scalded by indifference, and pass the fruit to Remus, who mothers.

He waves it toward her temptingly, down on his knees before her, and proffers the papaya, its juice streaming down one of his fingers, as though Baby is an altar, something to truthfully be proffered to. She looks at him and raises her eyebrows and we think for a minute that maybe she’ll take it, and I’m about to clap Remus on the back and tell him he’s a saint, but then she turns away, and Remus sighs with his palms and the papaya resting on his knees. Sirius snatches it up and gives the two of us a glare.

“You are being ridiculous,” he says and trods over Peter’s feet, standing awkwardly over Remus, to try to press the fruit into Baby’s mouth. She sits up and turns away from him. “Ridiculous, Evans!” Sirius cries, using one arm to swat Remus away and another to force himself on her. “By Merlin, if I’ve got to, I’ll bring out a cauldron and concoct some fumes to pass you out. You might be a bloody Potions prodigy around here, but you underestimate my powers of gassing you to oblivion.”

Peter makes a noise and approaches Baby from behind the couch, careful to stay away from Sirius’ insisting and Remus’ proffering and my despondence. He dips his little pudgy chin down and puts three thick fingers on her hair. “Lily,” he says in a soft voice, “won’t you eat the nice fruit? We nicked it just for you. We know you like it. It’s not even in season and it’s from somewhere far away. James picked it out only for you, I promise.”

But she doesn’t eat, even though it’s especially for her, even though it’s an escapist fruit with fresh seeds and an air of the Caribbean even in its off-season. Sirius sulks off, disgusted, and comes to stand by me while Peter continues to stroke her hair and Baby stares off into her own head. He presses a gob of ruined, dripping papaya into my fist and stands, shoulders near mine, breathing unevenly. We watch her, we watch Peter. Remus is still on his knees, but has his head bowed, and we’re not sure if he’s praying or crying like a girl or just resting his eyes. With Remus Lupin, you never know, not even after all of these years.

Reluctantly, I take a bite of the papaya in my own mouth and give Sirius a sideways glance. He stares ahead, frustrated with his own inability to make things right-side up again. I cross over and fall on my knees next to Remus and place my hands, one balled in a fist with the remaining papaya, on Baby’s knees. “Please,” I say, my mouth full of fruit, and gently crane my neck up so that my lips are near hers, so that my breath mingles with her breath. She exhales gently and does not move.

I can tell Peter, Remus and Sirius are watching me, Peter through his fat fingers, Remus through his pale little arms, and Sirius through his lowered, angry eyelashes. And I know, I know, I know, I know, that this will be considered basic and typical of me—the lovesick, disgraceful, somehow utterly changed James Potter—but in desperation and love-lust, I press my lips sweetly to hers and pass her the fruit through a kiss that drips of juice and unrequited passion. So she takes it, so she eats, and we all look at each other with happy, amazed eyes when we see her little gums chewing and tearing and sucking on the papaya gob that I passed to her with the first kiss I’d ever given her.

Remus lifts his head and we see that at least he wasn’t crying like a girl after all, and he beams at Baby, beams at me, and Sirius isn’t even angry anymore. He jumps in the air and laughs like a dog, barking at us, clicking his heels together, his bum positively wagging. Peter fondly presses his cheek to the top of her head and looks a little bit embarrassed at having just witnessed a kiss, and kisses the top of her scalp himself for good measure. And we’re all proud, all greedy little faces of pride and youth and heroism, the Marauders who took care of Baby and got her to eat the off-season Caribbean gob with the seeds in it.

And then Baby gets up and crosses to a writing desk and begins to write a letter.

 

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We are running fast down the hallway, moonlight nipping at our heels, and her hand is cold in mine. We are running somewhere, I’m not sure where; she used to lead, and now I think I am—we are a living inversion, we are the absence of color and love and youth. Her hand is tight in mine, a little paw to hold and yank her by as we flee from shadows and light together, tired of illumination and tired of waiting to die. She has choked off death, fended herself free from fear, and here we are, unimpressive, but at least going somewhere.

Our footsteps echo hollowly and I wonder why no one is after us yet. School is a place where we don’t want to be, a false shelter with good food and warm beds that tells us while we sleep that the outside is okay, too. Baby understands and I understand that with our periscopes we can only see destruction, so we run around in circles through these false halls and know we are being chased. We have no histories, we two frank orphans, but we are going toward the future together, cold hands and warm hands alike, alone. I am terrified to be without Sirius—I feel like a domesticated bird let loose in the Amazon. There is nowhere to go that feels right. I miss my perch; I miss familiarity.

But Baby is intent on getting somewhere with me, so I pull her and pull and pull until we are bursting through the Great Hall in all of its eerie emptiness. I wonder painstakingly why when I’m with anyone else there is always a professor or a Head or someone threatening me with expulsion and detention and minus three thousand House points, but when I am with her, there are shadows and silence, nothing more, except my clenched fists and her little hands.

We slide to a halt before the Head table and, ankles knocking together, we stare; where to from here, fair one? Where to, darling? She doesn’t know and I can’t tell her and her hair is a flame, I’m sure of it, that is coming to devour me. It’s so drafty standing there and I feel hopeless—there is no quick wit, no brevity, no clairvoyance to tantalize my spirit or hers and she looks at me, disappointed. She is always contrary, always angry. She always has been.

I pick her up in a swoop, her body pointed and bent in my arms, and lay her on the table. We think it’s made of oak. She is in the center of it, on her back, in her nightgown that trails down to her toes, and I watch her, wondering her complexity, while she does nothing but spread her limbs and reach into the damp air above her, like an infant, like a child without perception of depth. My words get stuck at the end of my tongue, and I know that she is crying now. I have brought her here to cry.

Above us, the sky swirls blackly. I fall to my knees.

 

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I walk in on him reading to her, her feet in his lap, his reading glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose. He reads aloud, “ _Did I request thee, Maker, from my clay to mould me man? Did I solicit thee from darkness to promote me?_ ” and Baby sighs in content, her toes crunching together at the sound of his voice. He looks pale, sick, and I glance out the window to the near-full moon. She’s on his bed, her dangling hair strewn about his pillows, and he has wrapped a quilt around her, the one my mother left him when she died.

I do not close the door behind me because I am afraid of disturbing the picture. I stand there, muddy broom and wet socks in hands, my trainers squishy on my feet, and watch from the dark while he reads to her and Baby listens, head cocked, body poised, fingers open, touching his sheets. He coughs and turns the page, smoothing it tenderly in that way he has, and she shuts her eyes.

I quickly, quietly walk back out of the room and shut the door, praying I never existed to them, lamenting my own poor timing, rejoicing over her contentment. I press my back to the door and let out a wild grin—for she, this angel, this smiling thing, has scrambled for a second from the pit.

I know it will be different again tomorrow morning. I know there will be more bad, more terrible, nonsense, no good, heartbreaking dilemmas, but let her, God, let her have her fucking moment tonight, oh please, oh God, oh please. I raise my chin and grin and grin and grin, sopping wet, my back to the door, and know, still, that she will mend.

Oh how I pray that she will mend.


End file.
